(NewsNation) — Since 2015, Rita Collins, 70, has been to 30 states, traveling across the country with her bookstore on wheels — and she shows no signs of slowing down soon.

Collins operates St. Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary out of her white Sprinter van. It’s called an apothecary because of how books make people feel better, she said.

“Sometimes you have a cold, you have a headache, you lay down, you read a good book, and you get absorbed into that book,” she said. “There’s so many things going on in the world and you read a book that makes you feel lighter, or gives you hope. I think reading can be medicinal.”

Collins wanted to open a bookstore after retiring from teaching, she said on NewsNation’s “Morning in America.” But she soon realized that in a small town in Montana, with a population of about 1,500, it would not be financially feasible.

So Collins decided to start a traveling bookstore. That way, she can take it to where more people are, and when the store is not open, “overhead for it is really low” because the van is just parked in the driveway.

For her first summer, Collins stayed in Montana. Then, she met a couple from New York City who suggested Collins take her store to the Brooklyn Book Festival. Collins hasn’t stopped traveling since, going from the Big Apple to a tiny town in the middle of South Dakota.

“I wasn’t a business person when I started this. And I feel that I’ve learned so much about business but also about people,” she said. “This is meeting people all over.”